A letter from our co-founders: Introducing Terrain Bio

Across the labs and companies we've founded, we've relentlessly pursued one goal: optimizing every building block of scientific experimentation. Shortened cycles, streamlined workflows, and multiplexed experiments all converge to compress timelines and reduce costs — transforming ideas into results, and results into tangible impact. But these tools shouldn't belong to us alone.

 
Today, we're thrilled to announce Terrain Bio, a company dedicated to accelerating scientific progress by bringing scalable, enabling technologies to every team developing RNA medicines. Our mission is to provide scalable, high-quality infrastructure that frees researchers from reinventing the wheel.
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mRNA is emerging as a transformative therapeutic modality, enabling us to create vaccines, gene edits, enzyme replacements, and targeted interventions with unprecedented speed and precision. Yet even with over 500 preclinical applications underway, every potential opportunity still demands years and millions of dollars spent recreating the underlying experimental infrastructure. In science, as in software, you wouldn’t expect innovators to start from scratch every time. You wouldn’t homebrew your molecular biology kits or train AI models from raw code. Just like in our science, we should be standing on the shoulders of giants.

Much like software engineering evolved from assembly to C to Python (and now even higher-level frameworks that abstract away complexity) biology needs its own leap. Rather than forcing each company to painstakingly build robust processes from scratch, Terrain aims to provide the AI-designed, high-purity RNA with white-glove delivery that today’s groundbreaking research requires.

When we (Jonathan and Omar) previously set out to tackle programmable gene insertion at Tome Biosciences, we learned firsthand how much progress can be hampered by a lack of external infrastructure. Even brilliant teams can find themselves bogged down in reinventing fundamental tools, diverting precious time and resources from truly innovative work. This experience taught us that breakthroughs emerge when scientists can focus on their core mission — rather than rebuilding the lab bench from scratch every time.

That’s why Terrain is built on a philosophy more akin to West Coast tech innovation than traditional pharma platforms. We aren’t focused on nurturing our own proprietary pipeline; instead, we’re crafting a product for scientists: better RNA, delivered faster. We work hand in hand with the teams pioneering RNA therapeutics and vaccines, taking care of RNA design and manufacturing so they can zero in on their core mission: making new medicines available to patients.
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Consider the innovation flywheel of computing: specialized players like NVIDIA (chip design), TSMC (manufacturing), and Hugging Face (model infrastructure) each elevate the entire field. Terrain aims to be that catalyst for RNA — accelerating discovery and the creation of medicines by removing infrastructure barriers.

This vision is already becoming reality: AI and machine learning are compressing timelines and enabling designs once deemed impossible. However, these tools require high-quality experimental data and rapid iteration. At Terrain, we integrate cutting-edge AI models for RNA design with best-in-class mRNA manufacturing, delivering optimized sequences for experiments in weeks, not months — 3-6x faster than conventional approaches.
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Terrain aims to be a catalyst for RNA therapeutics - accelerating discovery and the creation of medicines by removing infrastructure barriers.

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We’re thrilled to be on this journey with you. We’ll be sharing more about our science and tools on this blog, so please sign up for updates. And if you’re facing the daunting challenge of building better RNA from the ground up, we’d love to talk. Get in touch.
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We're deeply grateful to Josef Feldman, Adam Akkad, Elissa Butterfield, and others who helped get Terrain off the ground with their early support and guidance.